We are excited to announce a new addition to the Smart Home Skill API, the ability to define appliance categories. By defining appliance categories, both you and your customers can easily identify the types of smart home devices with which they are interacting.
As part of the larger DiscoverAppliancesRequest object, the new appliance categories feature is a simple addition of metadata for your devices.
You have the ability to identify your device as one of eight different appliance categories:
By properly defining your appliance categories, your devices will appear in the appropriate locations in the Alexa app when customers are managing their list or creating scenes. You can read more about this in our documentation on the DiscoverAppliancesResponse.
To add this new appliance category data to your responses, you need to add the “applianceTypes” node to your discoveredAppliances array. Here’s an example of how to do this:
{
"header":{
"messageId":"ff746d98-ab02-4c9e-9d0d-b44711658414",
"name":"DiscoverAppliancesResponse",
"namespace":"Alexa.ConnectedHome.Discovery",
"payloadVersion":"2"
},
"payload":{
"discoveredAppliances":[
{
"actions":[
"incrementTargetTemperature",
"decrementTargetTemperature",
"setTargetTemperature",
"getTargetTemperature",
"getTemperatureReading"
],
"applianceTypes":[
"THERMOSTAT"
],
"additionalApplianceDetails":{
"extraDetail1":"optionalDetailForSkillAdapterToReferenceThisDevice",
"extraDetail2":"There can be multiple entries",
"extraDetail3":"but they should only be used for reference purposes.",
"extraDetail4":"This is not a suitable place to maintain current device state"
},
"applianceId":"uniqueThermostatDeviceId",
"friendlyDescription":"descriptionThatIsShownToCustomer",
"friendlyName":" Bedroom Thermostat",
"isReachable":true,
"manufacturerName":"yourManufacturerName",
"modelName":"fancyThermostat",
"version":"your software version number here."
}
}
}
Please review our technical documentation for more technical details. To learn more about developing a smart home skill check out these resources:
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